Cisco Product Announcements and Demonstrations

Also see:

  • What is the New Workspace? — from Cisco by John Gaudin
    Take wikis, videos, phone calls, document sharing, same time editing, application sharing, messaging, conferencing, workflow, think of all aspects of your work and imagine it digital and integrated with any other tool you’d use, accessed from any device regardless of operation system and location.  Is your workspace really the device you’re on, or is it what that device ultimately connects into and enables you to do?

From DSC:
Below are some notes and reflections after reading Visions 2020.2:  Student Views on Transforming Education and Training Through Advanced Technologies — by the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of Education, and NetDay

Basic Themes

  • Digital Devices
  • Access to Computers and the Internet
  • Intelligent Tutor/Helper
  • Ways to Learn and Complete School Work Using Technology

Several recurring words jumped off the page at me, including:

  • Voice activation
  • A rugged, mobile, lightweight, all-convergent communications and entertainment device
  • Online classes
  • Interactive textbooks
  • Educational games
  • 3D virtual history enactments — take me there / time machine
  • Intelligent tutors
  • Wireless
  • 24x7x365 access
  • Easy to use
  • Digital platforms for collaborating and working with others on schoolwork/homework
  • Personalized, optimized learning for each student
  • Immersive environments
  • Augmented reality
  • Interactive
  • Multimedia
  • Virtual
  • Simulations
  • Digital diagnostics (i.e. analytics)
  • Wireless videoconferencing

Here are some quotes:

Math and reading were often cited specifically as subjects that might benefit from the use of learning technologies. (p. 5)

No concept drew greater interest from the student responders than some sort of an intelligent tutor/helper. Math was the most often mentioned subject for which tutoring help was needed. Many students desired such a tutor or helper for use in school and at home. (p. 17)

…tools, tutors, and other specialists to make it possible to continuously adjust the pace, nature and style of the learning process. (p.27)

So many automated processes have been built in for them: inquiry style, learning style, personalized activity selection, multimedia preferences, physical requirements, and favorite hardware devices. If the student is in research mode, natural dialogue inquiry and social filtering tools configure a working environment for asking questions and validating hypotheses. If students like rich multimedia and are working in astronomy, they automatically are connected to the Sky Server which accesses all the telescopic pictures of the stars, introduces an on-line expert talking about the individual constellations, and pulls up a chatting environment with other students who are looking at the same environment. (p.28)

— Randy Hinrichs | Research Manager for Learning Science and Technology | Microsoft Research Group

From DSC:
As I was thinking about the section on the intelligent tutor/helper…I thought, “You know…this isn’t just for educators. Pastors and youth group leaders out there should take note of what students were asking for here.”

  • Help, I need somebody
  • Help me with ____
  • Many students expressed interest in an “answer machine,” through which a student could pose a specific question and the machine would respond with an answer. <– I thought of online, Christian-based mentors here, available 24x7x365 to help folks along with their spiritual journeys


Telepresence comes home, but it likely won’t come cheap — fron CNN.com

For years technology companies have been describing the day that  loved ones separated by oceans could share special moments via  high-quality videoconferencing.

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From DSC:
We’ll have to see what happens to pricing models here…I’m not so sure that prices will be high for long (if that’s even going to be true at all given the myriad of options that are already unfolding).

Also, other relevant items/announcements from today:

Citrix Unveils GoToMeeting with HDFaces™: Integrated HD Video Conferencing
GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar and GoToTraining to include High-Definition Video Conferencing

SPIRIT DSP Launches VideoMost.com for Mass Market Multi-point Web Video Conferencing
Software-only HD Video Conferencing Product Available for Immediate Licensing and Re-branding to Help Internet Service Providers and Hosting & Cloud Providers Compete with Skype, WebEx and Google

Home video conferencing system forces you to clean up your act — from dvice.com

Video Gallery: 4 Futuristic Technologies From Japan’s NTT
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Demo 1: Telemedicine
Demo 2: Digital Signage
Demo 3: Home ICT
Demo 4: Remote Collaboration Apparatus “t-Room”

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4FuturisticTechs-8-26-10-dist-ed

Here are some slides from a Cisco WebEx presentation by Marcus Lim

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InfoComm 2010: Rich media driving the ‘Evolution of the Network,’ Cisco exec declares — from The Journal

“Just looking at what’s going on on networks around the world, it’s incredible. Traffic is literally exploding on networks,” de Beer told InfoComm attendees. “[Networks of the past were built] around data and [were] optimized for Web traffic. In just two or three years from now, when 90 percent of traffic is video, those networks will have to look fundamentally different.”

De Beer is predictably bullish on video and, especially, telepresence. Earlier this quarter Cisco completed a $3.3 billion buyout of videoconferencing and telepresence solutions provider Tandberg to help it stake a claim in what Cisco has estimated to be a $34 billion market for collaborative technologies.

He pointed to a future for collaboration that make it easier for users to create and manipulate rich media and for IT departments to deliver these technologies while also cutting back on the need for end-user support.

He added: “When it comes to rich human interactions, being able to easily create, find, share, consume, and manage content is very important. And we believe the network, what we now term as ‘medianet,’ which you should think of as the evolution of the network that is ready for rich media,… will play a very important part.”

Is it Real or is it Telepresence? — from the electronic papyrus blog

“When Mike Derocher, the Experience Design Manager for HP in Corvallis, Oregon invited us to see a demonstration of their Halo telepresence system, I wondered how this might be relevant to our work in financially strapped higher education. But the demonstration convinced me that the technology of telepresence is on a vector to a whole new landscape of possibilities for collaboration and learning; and despite it’s current high price tag, it’s sending us an echo from the future.”

© 2024 | Daniel Christian